Destination Rates

A Destination rate groups some prefixes with their cost details.

They only have two fields:

Name
Name to reference the destination rate
Description
Additional details
Currency
All rates imported/added will use this currency
Deductible Connection Fee
Set to ‘No’ for typical fee charged at call establishment. Set to ‘Yes’ to enable minimal-cost-alike behaviour (read below).

Tip

Destination rate names are not shown to the final client, you can use whatever makes sense to you.

Deductible Connection Fee (Minimal Cost)

When Destination Rate has Deductible Connection Fee set to yes, all rates’ Connection Fee will behave like Minimal Cost.

This is underlying logic:

  • When call is established, Connection Fee of matched prefix is charged.

  • When call is hung up:

    • Total cost without connection fee is calculated (CostWithoutConnectionFee):

      • If is greater than connection fee, connection fee is subtracted from total cost.

        • Final connection fee: 0
        • Final cost: CostWithoutConnectionFee

      • If is lower than connection fee, connection fee is adjusted so that total cost is equal to connection fee.

        • Final connection fee: ConnectionFee - CostWithoutConnectionFee
        • Final cost: ConnectionFee

    • In both cases, cost difference is refunded to affected balances.

Connection fee 0.01 - Total cost 0.21

  • Cost without connection fee: 0.20
  • As 0.20 > 0.01:
    • Call cost is reduced to 0.20
    • 0.01 is refunded to affected balances

Connection fee 0.01 - Total cost 0.013

  • Cost without connection fee: 0.003
  • As 0.003 < 0.01:
    • Call cost is reduced to 0.01
    • 0.003 is refunded to affected balances

This setting guarantees a minimal cost of 0.01.

Add rates manually

Brand operator can add rates by hand, filling these fields (List of rates subsection):

Destination
Pre-created destination that specifies a concrete prefix.
Connection charge
The amount that is charged just for call establishment.
Interval start
When should the billing engine start rating the calls. If you set it to 10, first 10 seconds will be for free.
Per minute rate
Price per minute of conversation.
Charge period
Increase cost every seconds? Or in 10 second intervals? Or every minute?

Note

A call with less duration that the one defined in interval start will have the price of the Connection fee.

Warning

All decimals must use point as decimal delimiter. 4 decimals precision is used.

How it works

Call cost/price is increased by (Per minute rate / 60 ) * charge period every charge period seconds:

  • If billing period is set to 1, every second the price will be increased price per minute divided by 60 (bill by seconds).
  • If billing period is set to 60, every minute the price will be increased price per minute (bill by minutes).

Importing a CSV file

At this point, the brand operator may have noticed that adding thousands of rates would be a really annoying and time consuming task, as there are 254 countries, each of them with their mobile networks, landline networks, special service numbers, etc.

That’s why the creation of destination rates is done using a CSV file.

The first step is creating an empty Destination rate to import the prices in and using Import rates option.

We can select which column contains which field, in case we want to import a CSV file in a non-recommended format. We can also decide whether to import the first line or discard it as it may have titles instead of data.

Hint

The importing process is done in background, letting the brand operator continue doing other stuff while it is finished.

CSV format

Although the import window allows importing non-recommended format CSV files, we encourage you to import a file in the proposed format, as it will make this process much easier:

Error

Comma is the only allowed separator character.

Error

Single quotes are not supported.

You can find a sample CSV for importing here.

The order of the columns should be:

  • Destination name

Warning

If they contain any comma, they MUST be quoted with double quotes. Otherwise, double quotes are optional.

  • Destination prefix

Warning

MUST start with + sign.

Error

If same prefix is used in multiple times in CSV file, import process will fail.

  • Per minute rate
  • Connection charge

Warning

MUST use point as decimal separator.

  • Charge period

Tip

Given in seconds, only integers greater or equal 1 are supported.

Once the import process is over, we only have to include this destination rate into some rating plan and bind it to the clients/carriers we want following the procedure explained in Rating plans.

Re-importing a CSV file

Once a CSV (first.csv) is imported into an empty destination-rates row, you can import another CSV (second.csv).

However, it is important to understand what happens when you do so:

  • Prefixes in both CSV will get its rate updated with second’s CSV one.
  • Prefixes existing only in the first CSV file will be kept.
  • Prefixes existing only in the second CSV file will be added.

Error

Downloading CSV using Imported file option will always download last imported CSV file (no the combination of both as described above).

Note that if both first.csv and second.csv contain exactly the same prefixes, resulting destination-rate will be as we had only imported second.csv. And downloading Imported file will download second.csv, that is exactly the current state of destination-rate.